Am I There, Yet?

I went to a beautiful funeral this weekend.  It was for a wonderful friend of ours from church.  She was 68…38 years older than us, but we still consider her a close friend.

Lorella was a school teacher who retired in 1999.  She was very youthful and energetic and truly loved people.  She was always laughing and teasing somebody.  She was a big sports fan and enjoyed giving people a hard time after her team beat theirs.  I can still see her running around when I close my eyes.  It really hit me that she’s really gone this weekend at church when I saw her granddaughter sit in a different section of the church…by herself.

Funerals are always a time of reflection.  We tend to reflect on the life of the person that just lost theirs and reflect on our own lives.  There were three things that stuck out at me at this funeral.

The first thing I noticed was the diversity of people at the church on Saturday.  All age groups were represented.  Lorella loved her job as a school teacher and cared deeply for the kids.  She taught in elementary school, but kept in touch with many of the kids, even attending their high school graduations.  The children in the last class she taught are now in high school and many were in attendance at the funeral.  She touched many lives and the generation gap didn’t exist for her.  She wasn’t happy just hanging out with people who looked like her and thought like her.  Her peers were too stuffy for her, but she still loved them.

I want to be like that.  I don’t want to be a stuffy senior who refuses to listen to those younger than me.  I want to reach out to those of other generations because there is so much to be learned by people who don’t look like me and think like me.  Plus, I’ve noticed that people who hang with those younger than them, look and act younger than they really are.  Maybe that’s the fountain of youth.

The second thing I noticed was that I didn’t recognize many church people at the funeral.  That was bittersweet to me.  For one, where were her church friends?  But, on the other hand, how fabulous of her to spend most of her time with people who aren’t from church!  Isn’t that what Jesus did?  That was huge for me.

I want to be like that.  I don’t want to spend all my time with church people doing church activities because that’s the thing that keeps me in that despised bubble.  I’d better practice what I preach, or I’ll just end up being the person I criticize.  It’s easy to hang out with my church friends and do church activities.  That’s the world I’m comfortable with.  I know how to speak the language.  I know how to answer the questions.  I know how to dress the part.  But, you know something?  I’m not called to speak the language, have all the answers and dress the part.  I’m called to love.  That brings me to the third reflection…

The third thing that I noticed was something the pastor said.  He said (and very truthfully, I might add), “Lorella loved people.  You can argue theology and doctrine, but you can’t argue love.” 

You can’t argue love.  That’s such a simple statement, but there are so many millions of Christians that just don’t get that.  Why do we think we have to fully understand the Bible before reaching out to those who need Christ’s love?  Why do we sit on our butt and do all of the religious activity and gossip about our neighbors and ignore the homeless on the street corner and the neglected and the abused?  And why do we judge those whose lives don’t look like ours?  No wonder we, as Christians, are so highly criticized.  We ignore the most important thing…love.

You can’t argue love.